Newtown wants 'grieving tent' gone

Newtown-- Chaplain Renee Gilbert (right) of Calvary Chapel of Southbury, hugs Sarah Miles, a Newtown Ambulance EMS worker as she visited the tent. The tent, on Church Hill Road, is the last remaining memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook School shootings. Photo-Peter Casolino 2/6/13

Newtown-- Chaplain Renee Gilbert (right) of Calvary Chapel of Southbury, hugs Sarah Miles, a Newtown Ambulance EMS worker as she visited the tent. The tent, on Church Hill Road, is the last remaining memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook School shootings. Photo-Peter Casolino 2/6/13

NEWTOWN -- The flame is burning low for the "grieving tent" on Church Hill Road, a carpeted roadside healing oasis, the last of the makeshift memorials that just a few weeks ago dotted the town in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

More than a month after town crews swept through Sandy Hook and cleared out several other ad hoc memorials shortly after Christmas, Renee Gilbert, a chaplain affiliated with Calvary Chapel of Southbury, continues to staff the big, white tent daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

She's there all day long with a hug, a non-judgmental smile, some hot coffee and tea, the warmth of three kerosene heaters and, as often as not, a stuffed animal for anyone who might need comfort -- although she said the tent is not an outgrowth of the church, per se.

Gilbert, who has been at the site since two days after the tragedy, said there's a need for the comfort the tent provides and she'll keep providing it as long as she can.

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That said, the town has asked her to take down the temporary structure, which actually is the third such tent she's put up, each progressively larger. Town officials want it down by Monday.

She says she'll comply.

"We never wanted to be a source of division," and continuing beyond the deadline would defeat the tent's mission of helping grieving people heal and find peace, Gilbert said.

The banquet-style tent -- marked by a giant American flag flying from atop a bucket truck parked nearby -- is on lent property directly opposite Blue Colony Diner, less than a mile from the school.

The flag was put up immediately after the shootings by Kevin Yaco, who owns a local construction company; he initially bought the big flag when his son was fighting in Afghanistan. Gilbert began her mission Dec. 16 by asking Yaco if she could set up alongside him.

The tent is just one of many ways people have tried to help a community in pain since Dec. 14, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother four times as she lay in bed, then drove to the school and shot 20 first-graders and six staff members before taking his own life.

Town officials say they've looked the other way to allow the tent to operate until now. But after two week-long extensions, they want Gilbert to take it down by Monday.

"We felt it was time," said George Benson, town director of planning and land use. "It was a hard decision for us to make, too. ... It's just something where we ignored it for a long time because they're doing something good."

Benson said "it's not like we're abandoning the counseling or abandoning the town." Anyone who needs help can get it from plenty of counselors working for the town, the school system and other agencies in town, he said.

Gilbert, a native of Oxford who was trained years ago by Billy Graham's crisis response team and previously was involved in counseling people after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and several plane crashes, doesn't want to shut the tent down.

She thinks the need still is strong; more than a half-dozen people wandered in, every few minutes, during the 30 minutes or so that she spoke to a reporter.

But she said she'll do what town officials ask -- although she's was adamant in saying, "We're not abandoning anyone. That's real important for people to know.

"The grieving process goes on for a long time and it's very necessary for people to have a place like this" where they can go. "Everybody grieves differently."

Anyone who still needs what the tent has provided after it's gone can contact Gilbert through the church, which is located at 134 Main St. South in Southbury. The church can be reached at 203-267-5441 or online at www.calvarysouthbury.com.

For Sarah Miles, a 23-year-old Sandy Hook School alumna who now is a volunteer EMT for Newtown Ambulance and arrived at the school in the aftermath of the shootings only to find there was no one to transport, the tent has been a godsend -- especially since the town took down all the other memorials.

"To see it all taken down so soon was heartbreaking," Miles said.

She was visiting the tent Wednesday for probably the sixth time in recent weeks. By this week, she and Gilbert had become fast friends -- "someone I can talk to and relate to," Miles said.

"They just want us to move on," Miles said of town officials. But "some people can't move on. ... People still need a place like this. I'm happy that they extended it until Sunday. I don't see why it has to come down."

Miles said she's still facing difficulties two months after the shootings. Last week, she got a free puppy donated by a rescue facility in North Carolina. But when the puppy, "Zeke," got sick this week and had to go to the vet, "feelings flooded back," she said.

"I couldn't help the kids," she said. "Now I couldn't help the puppy."

The question of how long to allow memorials, including the tent, to remain is a thorny one.

Monsignor Robert Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima, was sympathetic, although he sees both sides. St. Rose of Lima is the big Roman Catholic church just a few hundred yards up Church Hill Road that lost eight children and two adults in the massacre -- and had the honor and the burden of holding 10 funerals the following week.

"We took our shrines down, at the request of the town," Weiss said.

But someone since has planted a wooden cross in one part of the church's yard and "a little grove of crosses" in another. Weiss has allowed them to remain, he said.

He said he supports what Gilbert is doing, although he hadn't been there or met her, "and I agree, there certainly is a need to grieve.

"Our church is still a place of grieving," he said.

"I think we do need place where people can go" to deal with their feelings and find peace, he said, although he added, "I'm just going to go on record that I respect the town's decision" with regard to the grieving tent.

As was the case with the now-removed memorials -- and all the 115,000 pieces of mail that volunteer workers at Town Hall spent weeks opening -- the items that have found their way into the grieving tent come from everywhere.